Sushi, Muffins, and Hipsters

A reasonably complete guide to gentrification in The New York Times

As any close reader of The New York Times knows, a reliable theme of the paper is gentrification and the changes it brings. The word, which first appeared in the Times in the late 70s, has plenty of close cousins on the page—urban revitalization, neighborhood change, renewal, good investment opportunity. It is perennially celebrated in the Style section, fretted over in the Metropolitan pages, and coolly broken down by the relevant numbers in Real Estate.

But aside from the obvious markers, like demographic changes and home price increases, there are other ways in which the paper signals that a neighborhood has “arrived,” or is on the cusp of doing so. Sometimes it is explicit, and sometimes, things are a bit subtler, as it was a few weeks ago when the print version of the paper teased an inside-pages story on a family’s search for the perfect home in Harlem with a photo of a mop-haired, white kid playing a violin. The telling class signifiers that readily signal neighborhood change to the casual reader have themselves changed with the times, growing rather more precious recently. An early gentrification trend piece, focused on Manhattan in 1979, cited skyrocketing sales at Bloomingdale’s and the appearance of book stores. One from this year on the changing face of Brooklyn’s Prospect-Lefferts Garden pointedly cited “Sam Kelly, 28, [who] works at the neighborhood’s newest coffee shop, 10-day-old Tip of the Tongue, which bakes its own strawberry ricotta muffins and ginger scones, and has lived nearby since December.” Partly, this is simply that fashions change; partly, it is that cities as a whole are far more developed than they were 30 years ago. Below, a selective but representative history of the Times’ signs of gentrification throughout various waves of it, both in New York city and elsewhere in the country.